A.R.S.E.

Finally Channel 7 get it right..

http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/vid ... /20309503/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I could not agree any any more, finally someone has the balls to stand up and show whats really the problem.

Anyone know how to contact Skaife, while over the years ive never been a huge fan of his.. I really really feel like I need to thank him for doing this.

i agree 100%.

Skaifey for roads minister!

ysu wrote:Skaifey for roads minister!

nah... Skaifey for PM

Sorry to be controversial but I don't agree at all. Not with the 140kmh bit anyway...

Nines reporting of this yesterday was terrible. All they focused on was the 140kph part and neglected to mention anything else he raised. Making it a stupid comment with little regard for road safety. I see today, that Ken Lay has come out and validated the need for greater driver education which was at least a step in the right direction rather than just assuming "speed" is the be all and end all of road safety.

J.D. wrote:Sorry to be controversial but I don't agree at all. Not with the 140kmh bit anyway...

That's your right, but you'll be in minority

So? I hate quoting myself but here's what I said a few months ago:

J.D. wrote:I would have no problem with the limit on some parts of the Hume being raised to 150+ kmh except that it would be unworkable. Factors like heavy vehicle traffic, driver experience, primary and secondary vehicle safety, speed differential, vehicle maintenance and light or weather conditions would vary too much for safety.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13999&hilit=Hoon&start=50" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's a motherhood statement to say that we need more driver training: of course we do. Of course we should look at other country's road safety initiatives. "Better roads" are a different issue.

But do you really want 19 year-olds driving at that speed? No thanks.

So we get a racing driver to make suggestions on road safety.

I think most people with a modicum of sense know that speed limits are more about revenue raising than safety.

Bleet on all you want about better roads, but as soon as there is any move to raise taxes to pay for it, the general public scream blue murder.

As for giving a 17 year old dickhead an AMG Merc with 500kw and saying he will drive safer is a bloody joke. If they can wring 140kph out of a VN Commodore, they will sure as hell push a better car harder. Sure, when he hits a tree at 200, those extra air bags might help keep the body in one piece, that's about it.

And the comparison to Germany is another joke. Given they have 4 times the population in an area the size of a postage stamp, of course they will have better roads.

(Points at norbs)

What he said.

All of it.

J.D. wrote:(Points at norbs)

What he said.

All of it.

Start stretching JD, we are way out numbered.

And before people start calling me a silly old fuck who drives a station wagon, I get just as frustrated as the next bloke. The problem is, we all make mistakes. If you say you don't you're a liar. Probably 99% of the time we get away with it, but if you are unlucky, one day you might well hurt someone, even if you're doing the speed limit. Jesus, I sneezed the other day and veered onto the dividing line in an 80kph zone. Imagine if someone going the other way was texting. Faster speeds just means less time to react and greater rates of deceleration on impact.

I see where he's coming from and agree but he should have pulled it back a bit. Germany is light years ahead of where we are and I'm not talking about football.

He should have been using them as an example and then bringing up ideas that will work for us now, better driver training being one.

Driver training should be a compulsory Year 12 subject... and a difficult one to pass.

Vilante wrote:I see where he's coming from and agree but he should have pulled it back a bit. Germany is light years ahead of where we are and I'm not talking about football.

He should have been using them as an example and then bringing up ideas that will work for us now, better driver training being one.

agreed

nutty wrote:

Vilante wrote:I see where he's coming from and agree but he should have pulled it back a bit. Germany is light years ahead of where we are and I'm not talking about football.

He should have been using them as an example and then bringing up ideas that will work for us now, better driver training being one.

agreed

X2

I totally agree with him about parents not teaching there kids, i am in the process of teaching my 17 yr old daughter and that should not be allowed . Not that i,m a bad driver but i,m a miserable teacher and kids have a different attitude to there parents compared to a paid driving teacher. The other thing is fuck all of the kids actually rack up the 120 hours required as they all copy each others log books and the kids themselves have there head stuck up there own arses believing there good drivers.

Skaifey should not be licking Germany's balls but he right something is wrong with the way kids are taught to drive in Australia , and i agree with him about our roads too . En-J you have it spot on by the way.

Vilante wrote:He should have been using them as an example and then bringing up ideas that will work for us now, better driver training being one.

But that's exactly what he did!

He pointed to Germany, they had a similarly bad situation years back and by changing a NUMBER of things, they've managed to get it under control in a way which also helps alleviating traffic congestions.
Did you guys not listen?

Yes, he may not have completed the study required to actually get the "what need to be done" part, but c'mon, you don't expect him to do all the work by himself? He gave very good pointers. And getting shot down, even tho he pointed to the working example. Great.

Well perhaps he should have relayed that there's 50 years of work to get where Germany are and that we need to make steps now to get it moving in that direction. I'm not shooting anyone down, just trying to see it from the eyes of the normal person at home watching this and not understanding we have a problem. You on the other hand......

I live on the Mid North Coast and our stretch of highway (Port Macquarie to Ballina) is one the most dangerous stretches of main road in Australia. Seriously, we need better roads and better driver training. Fact.

I all to often deal with trucks crashing through fences/sheds/houses, trucks/cars drifting onto the wrong side of the road colliding head-on with other trucks/cars more than often ripping passengers out and under their wheels. I deal with claims where the simple act of even an older (experienced?) driver changing a CD in his Commodore renders him and his front passenger dead in an instant. Shortly after the occupants of the oncoming Landcruiser towing a Caravan that he wandered in front of also die, but in hospital several days later. Often a driver of a Mitsubishi Pajero will have a microsleep on a bend, wander into the path of an oncoming truck and upon impact, the front left passenger is torn out of the vehicle and under the truck. Dead.

But to make it even better, we have people here standing against a person who sees the issues and offers suggestions to improve things (some flawed, but many valued points that need to be raised). Frankly, I would happily pay a toll if it would mean my kids, when they grow up, have safer roads to drive on and I have one less thing to worry about. But, you people in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane can bitch all you like as you already have decent 2/3/4/5 lane highways and main roads... whereas us regional folk with our single lane, windy, rough and completely shit stretches of highway can just suck it up and continue to die.



Edit:

Here's a couple of links to prove the point (two largest road accidents in Australian History, both in the Mid North Coast (Grafton & Kempsey) occurring within two months of each other in 1989):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafton_bus_crash

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kempsey_bus_crash

So we have 56 people dead. The coroner recommends dual carriage between Newcastle and QLD border. Wise man. The government agreed and promised completion by 2006. Yet only 39% of that promise (July '08) has been achieved. The areas where the incidents occurred, by the way, have been bypassed but are not yet dual carriage. Our state/federal government is fucked up.

Vilante wrote:Well perhaps he should have relayed that there's 50 years of work to get where Germany are and that we need to make steps now to get it moving in that direction....

Dude, it was all in the report.

Rots wrote: But to make it even better, we have people here standing against a person who sees the issues and offers suggestions to improve things .

Exactly!



And some more thought on the current direction of handling the issue (the "speed kills" method)

I've seen friggen winding mountain roads here with 100km/h speed limit - and then you get the 110 on the 3-lane freeway.
So that's it? Anything over 110km/h kills, anything below is ok?

The people creating this image are stupid beyond measure. And this is a fact. They aren't helping anyone, just wasting public money - with a good intention, but wasting it all the same.



And how about the circumstances, the surroundings, and as it was in the report - the bloody cars themselves?

Mine can stop very quickly and safely; it's a 2 year old car. But more than often I can hear & see old crapboxes screech and near-spin behind me trying to stop. And I'm not even braking hard enough for the ABS to kick in! I'm sweating very often, waiting for the inevitable to happen; someone will eventually rear-end me with a badly maintained old shit of a car, which simply can't stop, and with zero driving skill and/or foresight.

Skaife's issue was we are really only directing our road safety campaign at speed, where as there's a lot more to it, newer safer cars for beginners is a good point. He never suggested they have quicker cars, just newer ones that aren't clapped out. Also better roads, and most importantly he was saying we need much better driver training, not just learning how to pass the test, but learning how to control a car. When i learnt how to drive before i even hit the road my dad took me out to an area near our place where there was a lot of room and dirt roads etc and showed me how to control a car. He'd tell me to drive straight at 60 and then he'd suddenly pull the handbrake to see how i would react. He had a bunch of different things like that to prepare me for the unexpected. That was well before he even let me out onto the road with other cars and it really paid off. Not only did i know the rules of the road but i knew how a car would react when something out of the ordinary happened. It gave me a lot more confidence when i did go out on the road that's for sure. I think we really need something more than what we already have. You'll never be able to stop an 18 y/o from wanting to do burnouts but you can hopefully minimize the consequences of stupidity.

ysu wrote:

Vilante wrote:Well perhaps he should have relayed that there's 50 years of work to get where Germany are and that we need to make steps now to get it moving in that direction....

Dude, it was all in the report.

Well I missed it then. If I missed it and I already agree with him then others that don't give a shit are going to have problems understanding. I think you, being someone that knows there's problems, can understand it easily, but others?

Sorry to make you

haha I really couldn't be bothered reading this thread, I wanted to post this straight after I saw it but couldn't find a link.


Made me smile very much so. Whether he was over the top or not, it is atleast a bloody start. It astonishes me that noone has really come out and publicly said anything of this kind before. For many years I've been ranting about the way the solution is to always lower the speed limit, as if it fixes anything.